Another PWHL team has secured its home ice of the second season.
On Wednesday, Montreal announced that Place Bell in Laval will be its primary home arena for the 2024-25 regular season.
Montreal played four games during the league’s inaugural regular season last year, making Laval its home for the playoffs. The team sold out its two semifinal home games against Boston, with 10,172 in attendance for the triple-overtime thriller in Game 2, the longest playoff game of any North American professional hockey league last season.
“We are extremely happy to be able to accommodate our growing number of fans and to give them even more opportunities to come support our players,” general manager Danièle Sauvageau said in a release. “This precious collaboration with the Groupe CH will allow us to create new magical moments with our fans.”
In 2024, Montreal played the majority of its home games across town at the Verdun Auditorium, an arena with a mere capacity of 4,043, less than half the size of the home to the Montreal Canadiens’ American Hockey League affiliate, Laval Rocket. The team will continue to train in Verdun, which holds the only high-performance hockey center for women athletes in Canada, Centre 21.02.
“We are ecstatic to welcome the PWHL back to Place Bell for a full season following their immensely successful debut last year,” President of Groupe CH Sports and Entertainment, France Margaret Bélanger, said. “Over the course of hosting multiple record-setting PWHL Montreal games in our venues in 2024, we saw crowds create an electric atmosphere, once again demonstrating the strength of this hockey market. We are thrilled to have the PWHL call Place Bell home.”
Montreal also played a home game at the Bell Centre, setting a new women’s hockey attendance record when they lost to Toronto in the Duel at the Top last April. With the PWHL schedule expanding to 30 games per team this coming season, there will be a number of neutral-site games like year one. Those games, along with the start date for the 2024-25 campaign, have yet to be announced.
